


Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus

by NightingalesAndHandGrenades (NightingalesAndLions)



Category: Billions
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6446323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightingalesAndLions/pseuds/NightingalesAndHandGrenades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobby Axelrod is a sleeping dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus

**Author's Note:**

> No money was made with this work, and Billions are created by Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Andrew Ross Sorkin. My deepest love to the actors and their characters.
> 
> Music for inspiration:  
> Double Trouble - Harry Potter Film   
> Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMzrgXFeX_o

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”   
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Everything in Bobby Axelrod’s life is about control. He has learned the hard way that illusions are just that – possibilities.

His own illusions are fleeting like dreams when the brain is struggling to wake up, but yet hovering on the edge of consciousness. Perhaps those are the moments he is most true to himself.

There is something very peaceful in the way the sun rises over the horizon. It doesn't’; to ask questions or demand answers, but shares its beauty, cleans in the soul and chain in up the demons of the night.

Bobby is all right with day and night in equal measure. He is used to both worlds, since both are filled with demons.

Sometimes, he thinks, long lost friends slide through the lines of his staff while he is briefing them. Other times, he feels a ghost of a touch on his shoulder, that makes his finger curl around a coffee mug in a death grip. He never turns around, never reaches out.

Bobby keeps his demons to himself, schools his face and looks in the eyes of his staff. Ax Capital reminds him of a highly intelligent society of ants, except he is no Queen ant. Axe Capital itself carries that role.

Inhale. Slow exhale. A rhythmic beat of the heart signalling that he is alive.

Wendy has stopped considering him borderline psychotic. Over the years she has learned to see what Bobby needs when he appears in her office and plops down on the sofa. The connection between them has undergone a metamorphosis over the time.

He looks at the rising sun, feet bare and opens the glass door to feel the breeze on his skin. Time is a strange concept. His mind drifts around, soaking up the first rays of the newly born daylight.

Bobby loves Lara. She is his rock, the mother of his children and his companion for life. Maybe they are soulmates, he thinks. If such a thing exists.

Lara is a fighter on her own. She is an Amazon where family, Bobby or her career is concerned. He lets her fight her own battles, but is never far away. 

Never above her…never below her…always beside her.

Bobby’s bond with Wendy is different. Sometimes he thinks of himself as Hamlet in his moments of pretend madness. She then becomes Horatio.

He never thinks of Chuck when he thinks of Wendy. Chuck is just a distraction on the way. He could turn out to be a leech, but Bobby knows that even the most ruthless sprinters eventually tire out, and get left behind on the track. Wendy’s fighting fire is a steady glow of yellow and red – fierce and undying, protective of all the same.

Perhaps she is not on team Axe Capital all the time, but Bobby has no doubt about her being on team Bobby Axelrod. 

There is no right or wrong in this playground. Everybody is building a little sand castle, but somehow the sandbox has become so much smaller and harder to navigate. Bobby sometimes feels like he’s drownin in the sand. It’s like drowning in the ash.

Humans are always so scared to be left alone with their own death. That hour when she arrives is scary for the bravest of brave men. There is nothing but the reflection of the soul, staring into the abyss eyes of Death.

Bobby thinks he’s already seen Death. Not in the Hollywood movie kind of way, because he would never stoop so low, but nonetheless. 

His own reflection in the water looks spooky and unfamiliar, as if he was in someone elses body. Observation is a learned skill, and not a gift people are born with. His mind is good at observing everything, trusting nothing, and predicting the way events unfold before his eyes on quite a regular basis. This is one of the reasons he is where he is today.  
He feels the world crackling under his fingertips, pulsing with life and energy. But he never reaches out to touch. His mother taught him not to play with fire he does not understand.

The unwritten code of conduct he lives by is, in its essence, very simple and straightforward. He doesn’t care if people around him think he’s a bastard. He’s heard and been called worse. He can take it not blinking and then destroy the opposing side with the whole arsenal at his disposal, and not once play the billionaire card.

Subtle, unnoticed by many, yet very effective. Swift, silent, deadly, like Reconnaissance Marines.

Those who have worked with Bobby the longest know how to spot the little changes signalling an incoming storm. He doesn’t try to hide it, since the world they are in is no Roger and Hammerstein musical of missed upportunities and crappy love stories.

It’s brutal, but it’s honest.

“It’s simple,” he tells Wendy one day after the latest newbie has left the office close to tears. “Call me a moron to my face and you’re fine. There is always a solution if you have a problem and you bring it to me. Just don’t pretend you’ve won and earned my trust, or, for the matter, any right of being confident. If they take it behind my back or go public, they become the story of yesterday”.

“Do you value people at all?” she once asked him, not understanding the calculated attitude, the uncaring tone.

“You know I do,” his voice had been so quiet, she had almost missed it, his eyes glued to the ceiling.

He never breaks eye contact when she asks about his own wellbeing and he answers with “I’m fine”.

If there is something she has learned about men, she thinks, is that when they tell her the truth, they never look her straight in the eye. At her, yes. But never straight in the eye.

Nobody should pretend they have figured out Bobby Axelrod. It never ends well for the involved parties. Wendy hopes her husband has not reached that point. Doing his job, the way his investigation is going doesn’t bother her. She is a smart woman and she knows that pulling a sleepin dragon’s tail is, for a lack of better term – inadvisable. Never tickle a sleeping dragon if you value your life.

She used to see Bobby as a lion – proud, protective of his pride, intolerant of competition either on his position or the whole playground. Now she see him as a dragon that is guarding the treasure and the key to his heart.

People have seen glimpses of it. The company, his kids, Lara… but nobody has seen Bobby Axelrod’s heart. Not since that day in September, covered in mud, sweat, tears and a thick coat of dust.

Inhale. Two, three… exhale… repeat.

Bobby feels his feet touch the water. The beat of the waves on the shore is answered by the rhythmic thump of his heart. The morning is still so young, it still has mother’s milk on its lips. He thinks about that day in September and sometimes he rubs his arms to get off the dust. 

It’s like Vesuvius, he muses. It’s constantly movin under the surface of seemingly peaceful Pompeii. Even though they built a memorial, Bobby can still see the centre of the Earth there. 

He feels oddly peaceful.


End file.
